spaghettimonster | Canyon: Inbox

[Seeing the dust, Sans's soul lurches hard enough that he wonders if, considering his soul is out in his chest all the time, that wasn't only a metaphorical description of how he feels. Dust on his temple and on the table and on a knife, and it takes willpower Sans didn't know he had to keep himself still as that on and off urge to fix things flares up. Papyrus is fine. He's not dying or anything, and he--uh, did that himself, so--so. Okay, that's really not helping his train of thought here, but the point is he can't swoop in and try to fix it right now and Papyrus doesn't look like he's in distress or anything. With cables connected to his temple like that, it could have been a matter of comfort, fixing things before they burst out or something. Papyrus saw Sans's temples crack open when his second set of wings came in, after all.

Looking away from Papyrus, Sans spots the abandoned casings. Those are familiar in their design, matching the sorts of things Sans knows Papyrus likes. But it looks like they haven't been worked on in a while. Of course, it wouldn't have been something Papyrus would have been interested in when he wasn't acting like himself, but it's strange he hasn't returned to them now.

Sans waits. He's good at that. He waits and watches, not that there's a lot to look at. Papyrus's movements are downright economical except for the subtle motion of his head bobbing to a beat Sans can't hear. It's like something out of a horror movie that nobody else would understand is even scary. But he waits until Papyrus isn't handling delicate machinery before he actually says something.]

You're working hard, huh? [He's sitting on the shelf, not even his wings moving. All of the eyes that can see Papyrus are focused on him.]

[Papyrus startles at the question, but quickly stills himself, the better not to damage any cables or components. He turns to look with another economical motion, minimizing the tugging on the cable in his temple above all else. With no flash of anxiety or embarrassment to remind him that the point of this project was to hide it, he doesn't reflexively move to obscure it from sight. His priority's on figuring out what's happening, starting with taking in Sans's appearance.

All those eyes, with the singular focus on himself. Those, and the stillness, and the quiet unannounced arrival... When did Sans arrive? Checking back, he didn't log anything that hinted at an arrival. So, a deliberately stealthy approach. Seems this isn't a casual chat... Well, he can let his brother make the first move in whatever this is, and maybe - more likely for Sans - not bother.]

...Yes, working hard! I'm trying to get all this set up. [Papyrus gestures helpfully at the small arm, with the nearly tweezer-fine tips. Notices the knife as he gestures, stiffens slightly with the reminder. Oh, right. Whoops. Offer a little more distraction, with a reminder of some other incident.] The better to do small repairs! Without, uh, working armlessly again.

[Still with those small movements, and no exaggerated response to Sans popping in unannounced. He notices how Papyrus stiffens when he looks at the knife, and Papyrus had been startled when San spoke, so it's not as if Papyrus has no expression at all, but it's still not much. He lets Papyrus draw his attention to the arm.] That's pretty cool. [Which it is. Papyrus is cool and this remains true. But if Papyrus was hoping Sans would go off on a tangent about Papyrus's coolness, that won't be the case right now.] So. How're you feelin' lately?

[Seems this isn't one of the times Sans is easily distracted. While his own coolness is one of Papyrus's favorite topics, and generally a good conversation topic... Hinting at it wasn't so much the goal, as the means to the end of deflecting whatever this is. Well. He can be honest, to a degree, without worry.]

I'm... feeling fine. [Honest: a generally positive neutrality. Some confusion at the questions, some unease what they're the surface of. Satisfaction that the pressure in his skull has been released, and further satisfaction as he maps the new port's functionality. He could go on about it, but it would be full of more technojargon than he usually prefers to admit to Sans, and besides.] A little confused. Didn't we just have this conversation, a few days ago... about you?

Heh, yeah, I guess we're trading. [Sans is dipping into that darker amusement that creeps in sometimes--that's crept in more since that last day at home. This isn't the sort of thing either of them should be having to deal with, but regardless, here they are. But they're here to deal with it. That's something. That's not nothing.] We've got an agreement about sayin' something when the other one's acting weird, right? And you're acting a little weird. [He doesn't elaborate immediately; he's giving Papyrus an opportunity to say if he's noticed or not. If there's something Papyrus can point to as a cause, that would be easier than it just being--a nonspecific change. A way Papyrus is now that Sans has to live with.]

...Ah. [His gaze flickers up and to the side to focus on some of the eyes of the halo, where his central attention isn't on his brother's dark humor. There's little surprise in his face or voice, because the question's not really a surprise. Maybe some disappointment, that he didn't keep up the act well enough to recover on his own, or a mild weary amusement that Sans caught on. Soft resignation. He leans a couple inches back in his seat, rests his elbow on the table and scratches at his head. Finger catches in the grooves in the temple he hasn't finished carving out yet - another uncleared blockage, like the broaching conversation. Might as well clear them all out, tonight. But experience suggests Sans wouldn't want to watch that, so that can wait.]

...What gave it away? I know I noticed some things, but, if there's something more I haven't noticed... [An obviously deflecting question to buy a little time to think, but he'd probably want to know even if he felt more normal. (If he felt fully normal, they wouldn't be having the conversation, unless the problem were in Sans. Which it could be that at the same time, who knows.)]

[Sans's list would probably start with "left that knife just sitting around covered in dust and didn't even think about it again until you happened to see it while I was here too", but he's absolutely not going to say that. Papyrus's reaction gives him somewhere else to start, though:] Well, there's how you definitely knew something was up but you're acting weird about me realizing. [Or rather he's not acting weird. Or rather he's not really reacting, not strongly.] And you said you're feeling fine. That's not really--y'know, The Great Papyrus. [He'd have expected Papyrus to overstate how great he's doing, especially if something was up.]

That would've been more normal, huh? It seemed too... [Over-the-top and embarrassing, for one, which he knows he only really began thinking when that switch-around started. Which really just emphasizes how this was a failed gambit from the start. He sighs, gives a small shake of his head, and continues pointedly not making any aggressive movements as to not spook Sans or anything. No one is holding a knife.]

...Okay. So. Don't, uh, misunderstand. [Or panic, but the problem with telling people not to panic is that they usually just hear the panic part.]

I said I was doing better, and that was true! I remember you again, and I don't feel like... hurting anybody. [Understatement, after his frustrated cyberstalking. The parts of his state of mind that were deeply alarming enough that he's making such a point of settling into a relaxed position to try extending a reassurance to Sans.] But. Some other things... I'm not, completely, back to the Great Papyrus either.

[They're both agreed on something being wrong. That's good, probably. At least it's a lot easier to work with if Sans doesn't have to try to dodge it. And Papyrus doesn't want to hurt anyone, which is good. He's trying not to think about how that's something that needs to be specified now.] Then the question should be somethin' like... Are you feeling things besides fine? [How stuck in neutral is Papyrus, here? Now that it seems like Sans doesn't have to further corner Papyrus on this, his posture relaxes somewhat; his wings drop into a resting position, making him look less like a strange, looming bird of prey.]

[Papyrus shrugs, which to an extent is an answer in itself. Seeing his brother relaxing, he feels less need to be so guarded and careful. But still, it's habit to not share everything, to be circumvent - to not up and just say things that leave Sans feeling needless, painful helplessness. Better to start with a joke.]

Well, the Fine Papyrus is pretty close... [The Just Okay Papyrus. The So-So Papyrus. Amusing, to him anyway. But poking at synonyms isn't enough for him to normally laugh, and Sans looks pretty sincere about taking turns being concerned, so.]

...I'm calmer. Everything's less... pronounced. Since those antlers cracked my skull, and then these started growing in... [He gestures at his temple, the one with the cable, then his face twitches in a slight smile.] It might be... connected. [Okay, maybe two jokes.]

[Okay, so those really did start growing in recently. It's better than hearing that Papyrus--installed them, or something. Sans isn't sure he'd be able to handle Papyrus cutting through his skull to install some more ports. Sans's smile quirks into something a touch more real for a moment at the jokes; he likes when Papyrus tells jokes, of course. But it's there and gone, because now he's wondering if Papyrus is telling the jokes to make Sans feel better, rather than actually feeling any urge to do so. It's not the firs time he's wondered that, but now Sans has to wonder how much of an urge to tell jokes Papyrus can even have right now.] Okay, so, can you use all those connections to connect with what's weird about how you're reacting to it right now?

[At that question, Papyrus rolls his eyes - and without any need to put on a show about it. It's obviously worded in a way to be obnoxious, and it's succeeding at that. He doesn't need to feel strongly to feel a little annoyed when Sans is annoying, even if it's out of concern.]

Yeah, okay. I'm not... bothered, by it, very much. And that's strange for me. I know. [Believe him, he's been pouring over the memories of the early part of his near-perfect recall, tracking what changed and searching for signs of cause.] I'm trying to tell if it's because of what built up in my skull. And I'm backing things up.

[Again, a gesture to his temple. Both as a sign of what's built up, and the mechanism for the backing up. Because his whole ass memories can just go in an external hard drive, now, that's a thing that can happen.]

Edited (wrong past tense, and better spacing while at it) 2021-12-19 02:32 (UTC)

Yeah, you were saying something the other day about having trouble forgetting stuff. [Sans is being vague as a courtesy for both of them; he remembers that it was related to the personality swap and there's no real need to get into all of that right now on top of this. Being vague, but bringing it back up. Sans's memory isn't near-perfect but it's always been pretty good, at least when it comes to his observations of people around him.] So once you back it up, can you delete stuff? [It seems like something Papyrus might have tried earlier if so, but on the other hand, Papyrus was just saying he's not particularly bothered by it.]

What? [That gets a stronger reaction than anything else this conversation, as Papyrus pulls back and makes a face at the thought.] Just... delete memories? I'm... I don't like not remembering things. [As good a mood as he was in those first few days ~~sans Sans~~, it's troubling and disorienting in retrospect. Especially since it seems... horribly familiar, in vague ways he just can't pin down the details of. Just enough fragments and feelings that he's sure he doesn't like the idea of forgetting about important things.] Besides, that's... that's a symptom. Of being even more robot than ever. Maybe what I'm... only somewhat feeling, is too.

Okay, not deletion, then. [It's strange, how Papyrus's stronger reaction gets relief and upset out of Sans at once. He doesn't really want to upset Papyrus, but at least he can still react to things.] Compression? Like zip files or--wait, why are your emotions getting messed up by how much you remember? [You'd think whatever mysterious magic transformed them would have put in appropriate safeguards against buffer overflows.]

What...? Why are you asking...? [He's repeating confusion more than he expected, but something in this conversation has clearly crossed wires. Sans is seemingly jumping - outright flying? - to conclusions, weird ones he has to assume are based on conversational correlation, because what else would it be? Is there something else that Papyrus is too emotionally numb to pick up on...? This, at least, he's bothered by. His fingers drum on the side of his skull as he thinks, near his incomplete temple but not quite on it. The sound is different than it was before circuitry started filling it. Different sensations than metal fingers on bone alone, different than bone on bone. Which is... half the problem, surely.]

Sans, I meant, the computer stuff that's built up in my skull. I... complained about remembering, because... I remember those days. Perfectly. [A vaguely haunted expression, as the change to not feeling the urge to hurt people, doesn't mean the memory of the feeling has faded in the slightest. He can reload it any time.] And it's... somewhat upsetting, to remember that, and not remember other things. So I'm backing up the more important other things!

[Things he would be uncomfortable to ever discover he'd forgotten. Things like cooking lessons with Undyne, or bad movie marathons with his brother, or the costume party, or fragments of his childhood... various pieces of the context of who he is. Even if most of them are shoddy records in comparison to the recent perfect recall, what with blatantly missing pieces. Making proper memories of them will take a degree of splicing things together... Later, though. Now is just a good time for backing things up. And... that's not a good point to stop talking, because then Sans might ask about how perfectly he remembers it. Keep going.]

I think I... accidentally turned something on, or off. To start remembering everything so vividly. [He hesitates again, because it's another thing he's gone out of his way to avoid acknowledging, most of the time. But the reasons for avoiding it were emotional, and don't seem so relevant anymore. One of the benefits of how he's being, one of the reasons he's less bothered than Sans clearly thinks he should be. And besides - it's obvious.]

...After all. There's barely any skeleton to me, anymore. Even in my skull, I'm mostly... robotic. It could be, a robot thing. I never met Mettaton, but he was acting all the time... Maybe, was it all acting? [Sans would know, if anyone, being a good judge of character and doing things at the resort - or at least one, singular and singularly infamous thing. If his run-ins with Mettaton revealed the more famous robot didn't feel things strongly... Then Sans is just being in weird denial, and Papyrus should prepare himself for this to be his new normal.]

It wasn't all acting. [And there's a dark undertow there that could sweep Sans away if he let it, because Sans's thoughts go to the last time he saw Mettaton--to Mettaton giving his life to buy Alphys just a few more moments of time to evacuate as many as she could. That wasn't acting. But he shouldn't be thinking about this. He shouldn't be thinking about this because he's trying to figure out what's happening with Papyrus, and he shouldn't be thinking about this period.

Papyrus has perfect recall now. Think about that instead. Don't think about the things he might remember from the personality swap. Think about it as a concept. Correlation isn't causation, Papyrus isn't wrong, but even if it's not an A causing B or B causing A situation, there can always be unknown variable C at play.] I guess it's not as simple as running diagnostics, huh? [Probably more like a black box neural network. Even if you can see the inputs and the outputs, figuring out how everything's hooked up between those two points...

Well. If it's emotions, then--Sans's hands go to his wings, combing through them like he can smooth away his own nerves.] It's not, right? [Sans is hoping it is that simple, even if he knows it isn't.]

[It's not exactly that Papyrus hoped for Sans to confirm his theory, because to some degree he'd dreaded it. But it would have been simple, simpler than this uncertain situation, and he slouches a little at the answer. Partly too because the tone of voice, which he misreads as being about himself, as bitter frustration with Papyrus's state. And who could blame him? The So-So Papyrus isn't the Great Papyrus, and isn't the full brother experience, even if he's tried to be.]

...Who knows. I've been checking things out, between uploads. But if there is, I haven't run the right diagnostic yet. [His voice has gone more subdued with this. Part of it is, not being as bothered by anything as he ordinarily would be, and possibly should be. Part of it is wanting to have an answer to the question, not liking that he doesn't have one to offer. Part of it is a question of priorities - forgetting his brother's entire existence was upsetting even with the diminished feelings. So if he had to work on protecting one... His feelings valued the memories over the feelings themselves.]

[Sans watches Papyrus's slouch and hears the more subdued tone again and his preening only picks up in pace. If it's something Sans could figure out, then he should offer, right? It's pretty close to the least he can do. And hey, Papyrus probably literally can't get as annoyed or upset with him for not talking about this particular expansion of his magic earlier, right?]

I've got a couple more tricks besides the shortcuts and those invisible hands. Emotion tricks. I could try checking.

[Papyrus squints at him, puzzling out the (deliberate) vagueness of the offer. Sans thinks he can do something to figure it all out, to possibly help fix things. Something with emotions, that he hasn't mentioned before, and wouldn't mention if it weren't for this. Something with emotions...]

...You have something with emotions, and we tested dreams first? [It's not strong enough to be called indignation, but there's wisps of it as he stares. Finally, he shakes his head, his voice picking up a little energy.] How very incredibly you. Eating, and taking a nap, as first resorts. I guess that answers whether you're normal right now. [Which he'd still been wondering, in some corner of his skull and/or circuitry.] Yeah, okay. How does this checking work...?

I would've checked eating emotions next. [Not on Papyrus, though, considering how few of them he's been having lately. But that's not the point right now. Sans shifts forward on the shelf a little but doesn't move to get off of it.] I can--sync up, I guess--with what you're feeling. I don't need to touch you or anything, I can just do that from here.

[There's probably an upper limit to how far away from someone Sans can get, but as established, Sans has been trying to ignore his emotion-related stuff.]

With what I'm feeling, huh... [That's enough for a faint shiver, a tiny rattling. Somehow, that's less comfortable than literally uploading memories to his computer. Maybe because the computer doesn't have any lasting opinions about it ~~that he knows of~~, maybe because it's Sans. Or maybe because memories are the full context, instead of just the messy painful things Papyrus prefers to tuck out of sight.

It takes him a minute to realize why Sans is even offering the reassurance about touch. Because of that first time Sans offered to share how he was feeling, and they both wound up thinking they were gods. Just as well that stuff was before his perfect recollection began, or maybe he'd be returning to that state too. He eventually shrugs again, returns to the question of why this might help.] So, a remote session... so you can feel around for, a blockage, or something?

Yeah. It doesn't hurt or anything. I've done it a few times accidentally before, heh. [Not just with Papyrus but in general, and for all he's playing it off in the name of attesting to its harmlessness to the both of them he'd rather not think about the times his emotions just went off in weird directions without his say-so.] But I won't unless you say it's okay.

[At least not yet. If it gets really bad... Well, it hasn't yet, so he'll deal with any potential futures later.]

I don't think hurting is what I'm... thinking about. [Worrying about, if worrying is the right word for whatever caused him to shiver. Doesn't seem strong enough to call worrying, but it's... deep. A dry riverbed, but the banks are above his head. He instructs his thoughts to focus, to reference the framework he's been compiling about his normal personality. Why would this idea usually be discomforting to him?] When you... did that, before. Could they tell? When you were doing it?

[This is one of many things Sans doesn't really want to talk about. But he has to now.] No. Nobody's mentioned it, anyway. I guess someone might notice that I'm acting different, if it was a really big emotion, but they can't feel the magic. [But doing it on purpose means he'd be expecting it, so he could get it more under control. Which, yes, does mean Sans could be doing it all the time secretly, except Sans really doesn't want to do that.]

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speech w/ rearranging and trimming, but mostly shoved a lot of things into narration

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